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Monday, September 12, 2016

Week of Tournament Reviews Day 6: Gorilla Games!

Normally I am traveling to a big regional or national tournament on Saturdays, but yesterday I stayed home to attend another local tournament. Even though this local is the closest one to my house, I've never been to it because of how booked my Saturdays have been. It was nice to have a less stressful Saturday for the first time in a months.

Gorilla games can best be described as a cross between a retro GameStop and a card shop. They sell everything from Magic: The Gathering cards to old NES games. All of their old games were very reasonably priced, and it was fun to just browse through the store in between rounds. In the front of the store they have tables set up for card events, and in the back there is the video gaming section with four large TVs and comfy chairs.

Part of the back gaming room

Every Saturday at 4:00 p.m., the tournament starts up with what is called the Smash Trainers Club. This is intended to be an amateur bracket for the less competitive players. Instead of charging an entry fee and venue fee, the Trainers Club is a flat $5 entry. Prizes consist of store credit instead of cash payouts, and there is a more generous distribution (top five payout). When the Trainers Club concludes around 6:00 p.m., the main bracket begins in which players compete for cash payouts. Although I only came for the main event, it is possible to enter both brackets if you want—some players did so.

I really like how Gorilla Games structured the entry fees and payouts for the main event. Almost every local tournament in Chicago runs a standard $5 venue fee, $5 bracket fee. At Gorilla Games you pay just $3 for the venue fee and $7 for the bracket. By using this structure, payouts are much higher than normal without charging more than the standard $10. By providing better payouts for the competitive players and offering the less serious Trainers Club bracket, Gorilla Games brings a good experience to all players regardless of skill level.

If I had to nitpick anything bad about the tournament my only complaint would be about the TVs being a little bit laggy. It was noticeable, but still playable. I had brought my monitor from home so most of the later bracket matches were played on that. We did have a lack of set ups in the venue on Saturday, but that is a fault of the players not bringing set ups and not an issue with the tournament itself. Overall it was another very enjoyable tournament, so if you want to try something small instead of going out to big tournaments on Saturdays, give Gorilla Games in Naperville a try.

I am Benjamin "JJROCKETS" Rowe, a Smash Ultimate Diddy Kong main from Chicago, IL. Currently I live in Daejeon, Korea where I work as an elementary school English teacher. In Brawl and Smash 4, I was known as one of the top Diddy Kong players, and I am looking to continue this success in Ultimate. On my website I will be posting about my travels in Asia, my Smash Ultimate tournament experiences, guides on how to improve at Smash, and random thoughts about life. Besides blog style posts, I also have my tournament schedule with my upcoming events listed, and a compilation of my tournament results in Ultimate.